The Mount
A Natural and Social History of Mount Noorat
Mount Noorat was the site of a ‘once noble forest’ and the home of “prolific native fauna”[1]. It was the setting for great gatherings of the Indigenous clans for trade and meetings. Author James Bonwick mentioned that the Mount stood out among the neighbouring hills in terms of the amount of natural vegetation covering it when he visited in 1857. An even earlier visitor, George Augustus Robinson, noted in 1841 that it was the location chosen by splitters for obtaining timber in the district. Yet in 1893 a visitor described it as being “destitute of trees”[2]. This “bare, arid landscape of round-top hills…”[3] has a fascinating history spanning 20,000 years. It came into being through a series of volcanic eruptions. Fire-fountaining, explosions and extensive lava flows combined to form one of the most distinctive scoria cones and craters on the volcanic plains of Western Victoria in Southeastern Australia.
[1] Frank Smith writing in the Australasian, 9 April 1921, p.58.
[2] ‘Our Agricultural Reporter’ writing in the Leader, 4 November 1893, p.6.
[3] James Golden writing in his blog, ‘View from Federal Twist’ in 2014.
Image (above) Eugene von Guerard. Crater, Mount Noorat, 26 May 1857. Volume 05: Sketchbook XXVI, No. 8 Australian. Mar-Apr, 1857, Sep-Oct, 1859. Dixson Galleries, State Library of NSW
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Further Reading
Black, Maggie (2016) Up Came a Squatter: Niel Black of Glenormiston. Sydney: NewSouth
Bourke, Jeremy (2017) Forged by Fire: Volcanoes in Victoria. Australian Geographic, May 17 2017
Corangamite Shire (2019) Mount Noorat Management Plan. Camperdown: Corangamite Shire
Dawson, James (1881) Australian Aborigines : the language and customs of several tribes of Aborigines in the western district of Victoria, Australia. Melbourne: George Robertson (National Library of Australia via TROVE)
Golden, James (2014) 'Wigandia: A Garden of the Sun', View from Federal Twist: Ramblings of a New American Gardener, March 12 2014
Handley, Heather, Jozua van Otterloo and Ray Cas (2018) 'Would the volcanoes in Victoria really ever erupt like those in Hawaii?' Australian Geographic, August 29 2018
Wilkie, Ben (2020) 'The Deforestation and Reforestation of Victorian Volcanoes', In Restoring Forests in Times of Contagion: Papers to celebrate John Evelyn on the Occasion of his 400th birthday. Dargavel, John & Ben Wilkie Editors. Australian & New Zealand Environmental History Network
Wright, Tony (2021). "A people torn apart by bloody dispossession and disease (Yoo-rrook Justice Commission)". The Age, 10 October (Insight)
Wright, Tony & Justin McManus (2021). "We must walk with Victoria's First Peoples on the land they made beautiful" ("Yoo-rrook. A time for truth"). The Age, 9 October (Insight, p.21-26)